The latest season of Netflix’s The Circle has kicked off with one major twist: there’s an AI by the name of “Max” playing too — although for one viewer, this twist was far more uncanny than he expected.
Griffin James sat down to watch the hit reality TV show’s sixth season, but was shocked to see his own face being used by Max the AI. Griffin recorded his response and posted the video to TikTok showing the pictures being used by “Max” before flipping the camera around to show that he was indeed the face of Max, “That’s me! They used my face!” It’s hard to deny his claim, it’s clearly him, he even has the same dog as in the photos.
Didn’t we have a Black Mirror episode with pretty much this exact plot in the most recent season? I hope for Griffin’s sake this isn’t some new experimental IRL experience of the dystopian sci-fi series, because that would suck. There were plenty of comments surprised to find that Netflix would do such a thing, as it seemed like Griffin’s face had been used without consent at first.
Please contact a lawyer. This has been happening A LOT.
I think I’ve seen this on Black Mirror lmaooo
Wait did you not allow it? I am so confused. So happy to see the real “max”
He followed up his initial video with a few more that gave a little bit of context and from his videos it seems pretty clear that James is enjoying his newfound fame, and doesn’t find the whole situation weird and terrifying at all. In a clip posted yesterday Griffin read off a sheet of paper claiming he did actually give consent, before addressing someone off-camera, thus implying he was being forced to read the paper.
Did Netflix really use Griffin’s face without his consent?
Obviously the video is a joke, but it begs the question, did Griffin give consent or not? Because most people would be a lot less chill about the whole thing if they were in his shoes. Well, it turns out that when applying to be a contestant on The Circle, there’s actually a section on the application authorizing Netflix to use potential contestant’s images for catfishing instead.
So when applying to be a part of the sixth season of The Circle, Griffin likely consented to his face potentially being used. In fact, he actually confirmed as much when speaking with Tudum, Griffin said, “Someone from the casting team reached out to me on Instagram.” So not only did he allow for his images to be used, but someone from Netflix double-checked with him before going ahead and doing it.
So now we know that Griffin consented to his images being used and he’s just having a laugh about it over on TikTok. It’s a relief to know that he’s cool with the whole thing and Netflix aren’t just using random people’s likeness without permission… yet.
